Valyria and Westeros (Spoilers)
A Dance with Dragons; 2nd Tyrion Chapter
The Freehold’s grasp had reached as far as Dragonstone, but never to the mainland of Westeros itself. Odd, that. Dragonstone is no more than a rock. The wealth was farther west, but they had dragons. Surely they knew that it was there.
Ever since Tyrion brought this up I have wondered the same thing. Why were the Valyrians who ruled all of the Valyrian peninsula, old Ghis and Slaver's Bay, and the majority of the present-day Free Cities as well as making slaving incursions into Sothyros either unable or unwilling to conquer Westeros when they had at their disposal vast well-trained legions, slaves galore, pyromancers, storm-singers, blood mages, metallurgical ensorcellment, and, of course, dragons?
Westeros at the time would have been populated only with the petty kings of the first men and later the squabbling Andals and Rhoynar. All that time they made no move when they had clearly shown aggressive expansionist motives.
Then, shortly after the Doom, Aegon flees to Dragonstone with his immediate family and the world's last remaining dragons apparently uncontent to rule Volantis or any other of Valyria's one-time holdings and throws thousands of years of caution to the winds and conquers nearly all of Westeros in short order with three dragons and a handfull of hastily drafted levies.
Something must have kept them in check in antiquity or they would have steam-rolled them then as Aegon did, but what was it?
My own take is that, sorcery being so much more potent back then (perhaps much more than the maesters would have us believe, but that is an entirely different can of worms), the cause likely lies there. That and the only thing that Westeros had that nowhere else does is the Children of the Forest(they have the Others, but not at that point, I think). The first men, through their pact with the Children, seem to have the affinity for Greensight. It is mentioned and demonstrated in the books that controlling the dragons for military endeavors required the use of binding spells and possibly empowered bloodlines and that they were used in all the conquests as a nigh-unbeatable, general trump card. If a beastling or a greenseer were able to warg into an enslaved dragon I can only imagine the potential havoc. But they managed to maintain Dragonstone, I presume, because so near a volcano their magics, which seem to rely heavily on fire, would have been strengthened.
So the most advanced military in the world employing massive beasts of destruction failed where a bunch of half-naked, self-mutilating zealots succeeded. In the course of their conquest the Andals burned every weirwood they could, slaughtered the Children wherever they found them, and called down beastlings and greenseers as demonspawn to the point that even the First Men began to abandon the practice. All this, I believe, weakened the sorcerous defences of Westeros and perhaps whatever greater warding the Children may have had in place. Why the Valyrians failed to capitalize on it, I don't know. Perhaps at that point they had aquiesced to the fact that one does not simply walk into Westeros if one is a dragon.
I thought this was an interesting topic and potentially relevant to mod updates/submods in thevery distantfuture. Though how how any of it might be worked in I don't know, but a few other fantasy mods seem to incorporate magic to varying degees.
I'm interested to know what my fellow crackpot theorists think.
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Originally Posted by martin616
